Education law digest – autumn term: In legislation

The Employment Rights Act 2025 — where we are now

The Act is being brought into force in phases through 2026 and 2027. The table below sets out the main commencement dates confirmed so far. Several remaining dates are still subject to secondary legislation and could move.

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Six-Month employment Tribunal time limit

From 1 October 2026, the standard limitation period for bringing most tribunal claims doubles from three months less a day to six months, under the Employment Rights Act 2025, The new limit applies only where the underlying act, dismissal or failure falls on or after 1 October 2026; where a claim concerns a series of acts, it is the date of the last act in the series that matters.

A longer limitation period is likely to mean more claims are eventually issued, and tribunal listing delays are likely to lengthen further as a result, build this into HR and legal budget planning for 2027.

Meta AI smart glasses – what schools need to know

Over the past few weeks a wave of independent, boarding and grammar schools, including Shrewsbury School, Woodbridge School and Haberdashers’ Boys’ School, have introduced outright bans on Meta’s camera-equipped smart glasses on school premises, joining universities, courts, cinemas and other institutions doing the same. The glasses are designed to look like ordinary prescription glasses or sunglasses but allow the wearer to record videos, take photos or livestream discreetly, with only a small indicator light to signal that recording is taking place, a light some users have been known to cover.

Separately, UK data protection regulators have been in contact with Meta after reports that outsourced content reviewers were able to view sensitive footage captured by the glasses, including intimate recordings. Whatever the eventual outcome of that inquiry, it illustrates a point schools should note: footage captured on these devices does not necessarily stay within the device or the wearer’s control.

For a school or trust, the core question is not whether a pupil or member of staff is personally using the device, but what happens once recorded footage of pupils, staff or visitors is uploaded, shared, or used. A related, practical point, existing school privacy notices and CCTV policies were not written with covert, wearable recording in mind. A device that can capture a classroom, a staffroom conversation or a safeguarding meeting without anyone present realising is a materially different risk profile to a fixed, signed CCTV camera, and policies should be updated to say so explicitly rather than relying on general “no unauthorised recording” wording to cover it by implication.

Bullying, safeguarding and pupil privacy

The schools who have introduced bans have been candid that bullying, rather than data protection theory, is the immediate driver. Discreet recording creates an obvious route for footage of pupils to be captured and circulated without consent, and the difficulty of telling whether someone is recording at all makes it harder for pastoral staff to intervene before harm is done. Any anti-bullying policy refresh this term, timed conveniently around Anti-Bullying Week in November, is a natural opportunity to name wearable recording devices specifically, rather than leaving them to be read into a general mobile phone policy.

Staff privacy and harassment

There is also a staff-facing dimension that is easy to overlook. Covert recording of teachers by pupils, parents or visitors sits squarely within the kind of conduct the new duty to prevent third-party harassment, expected from 30 October 2026, is designed to address, since that duty is not limited to sexual harassment and expressly extends to non-employees such as pupils, parents and visitors on site. A parent secretly filming a difficult meeting, or footage of a teacher being circulated out of context, could found a harassment complaint from a member of staff against the school if the school has not taken all reasonable steps to prevent it. That makes a smart-glasses policy part of harassment risk management, not just a bolt-on to the mobile phone policy.

Recommendations:

• Consider updating mobile device, safeguarding, CCTV and dignity-at-work policies (amongst others) to name wearable camera and recording devices explicitly, rather than relying on general phone rules.
• Consider setting a clear position on staff, pupil, parent and visitor use on site, and state it in signage at entrances alongside existing CCTV notices.
• Treat any policy updates as part of the harassment risk assessment due before 30 October 2026, and record the risk covert recording poses to staff and the steps taken to mitigate it.
• Review data and incident-reporting procedures to cover a scenario where recorded footage of pupils or staff is shared or uploaded without consent.
• Keep policies under review, this is a fast-moving area and enforcement in a large school community is acknowledged to be difficult, so policies should be paired with clear, proportionate escalation steps rather than rules alone.